The Blogs: Pray. Learn. Serve.

Israel is at war.

Not a theoretical war. Not a political debate. A real war where reservists have repeatedly left their wives, their children, their businesses and their jobs to put on a uniform and defend the country and the soul of every Israeli.

And at some point, we have to have an adult and practical conversation about Haredi service.

When Israel was founded, David Ben-Gurion agreed to defer military service for roughly 400 full-time yeshiva students. The idea was to preserve a Torah world that had been nearly destroyed in the Holocaust.

That was 400 students.

By 2024, roughly 63,000 Haredi yeshiva students of draft age were covered by the system.

Those are not remotely the same circumstances.

Israel has changed. The Haredi community has grown tremendously thank Gd. And after October 7, the security reality changed too.

Close to 300,000 reservists were called to serve after October 7. Many have now done repeated rounds of reserve duty.

They have missed births.They have missed holidays.They have lost income.Their wives have carried households alone.

Their children have watched Abba disappear again and again because the country needed him. My cousin Chanina, and a tank commander and his wife Shoshana have felt this all too familiarly.

So no, it is not unreasonable for Israelis to ask why that responsibility should permanently fall on someone else’s son and not their own.

And before anyone twists this into an attack on Torah: it isn’t. I have Haredi family members that learn in and run Yeshivas.

Torah matters. Prayer matters. Yeshiva matters.

But protecting Jewish life also matters more.

The Jewish soldier standing at the border is not somehow less holy because he is holding a rifle instead of a Gemara.

Pray.Learn.And when your country is fighting for its survival, serve too.

Pray from the battlefield if you have to.

At the same time, the secular Israeli establishment needs to understand something important about the Haredi community.

You cannot tell Haredi men, “Come serve,” and then build an environment where they believe serving requires abandoning the very religious identity you claim to respect.

That will never work.

The answer is not to make Haredim secular.

The answer is to create serious frameworks where Haredi men can serve as Haredim!!!

Build Haredi units. Give them commanders who understand their world. Provide appropriate standards of kashrut. Protect prayer time. Respect Shabbat and halachic requirements whenever operationally possible. Address legitimate concerns about modesty and religious environment.

And recognize that not everybody has to serve in the exact same role.

Some men belong in combat.

Others can serve in intelligence, logistics, technology, emergency response, medical roles, cyber, search and rescue, or meaningful national service.

There are countless ways to contribute to the Jewish state. But there has to be contribution.

Because you cannot simultaneously say:

Protect us.Fund our institutions.Defend our communities.Keep our children safe.

And then tell everybody else that defending the country is their responsibility.

That social contract will not survive forever.

Israel belongs to all of us.So does the responsibility of protecting it.

Stop demanding that Haredim become secular.

And stop demanding that everybody else carry their share.

Build a system where a Haredi man can serve Israel, protect Am Yisrael, keep Torah and mitzvot and come home just as Haredi as the day he left.